Even an hour before Wednesday evening Mass on Feb. 25, the Catholic Student Center (CSC) at the University of Maryland in College Park was teeming with activity. In the Great Hall students as well as volunteers from St. Philip the Apostle Parish in Camp Springs prepared for the pasta and chili dinner. The smell wafted into the chapel, where a dozen or so students wrote in journals and knelt before the tabernacle.
Soon, 200 students filled the chapel, where Cardinal Wuerl said Mass before kicking off their weekly Lenten series on the Creed. In his homily, he urged the students to return to the basics in order to grow in their faith during Lent. “Some important words that all of us learn very early include words like ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘I’m sorry’ and the modern day equivalent of ‘you’re forgiven’ – ‘it’s okay,’” he told the Mass-goers. “Lent is a wonderful time, a time when we say, ‘please, Lord. Thank you, Lord. I’m sorry, Lord, and I’m glad to hear that I’m forgiven, that it’s okay.’”
After greeting the students after Mass, he sat down to eat with a group of student leaders and RCIA candidates. Between bites of food, the cardinal asked the students to tell him their best advice to those entering the Church at Easter. “I really liked how he asked us questions instead of the other way around,” said sophomore Katie Edwards, a civil engineering major. “He is more of an expert than us on a lot of things, so the way that he asked us to talk about our faith, I thought that was really special.”
Edwards advised new Catholics to carve time out of the day to go to Eucharist Adoration, a practice that, for her, has been a quiet, reflective blessing in the middle of busy days. “[It’s] something that’s changed my life,” she said. Though Edwards was raised Catholic, she said, “being here at Maryland and at the Catholic Student Center is what reignited my faith.”
The cardinal started his talk after dinner by discussing the beginning of the Creed, noting that the phrase “I believe” reminds Catholics that they must constantly renew their faith in the mysteries of God and of the Church. Christians do not believe in “a textbook of things that we can study,” said Cardinal Wuerl. “We believe in someone. Our proclamation is focused on Jesus.”
The one living witness to the life, death and resurrection of Christ, said Cardinal Wuerl, is the Church. Through the sacraments the Church administers, Christ is able to touch the faithful, he said. Cardinal Wuerl encouraged all the students to frequently go to Mass, “[where] we [are] present to the very mystery of the Last Supper…. when the central event of our salvation becomes really present,” as well as to the sacrament of Penance. The cardinal said, as a friend once told him, “My life isn’t that exciting, I don’t have any great sins, but I got to Confession because I accumulate the grime of living, and [in Confession] I wash that all away.”
Though you can and should spend an entire lifetime deepening your understanding of the faith, said Cardinal Wuerl, “the person who knows the Creed has everything a person needs.” He himself co-wrote a book on the Creed titled Faith that Transforms Us: Reflections on the Creed, which he gave to the all students, along his small book on the Mass called The Mass: the Glory, the Mystery, the Tradition.
Finally, he encouraged the college students to be proud of their faith and to share the Good News with a sense of urgency. “Jesus didn’t come to say, ‘I have a special gift for you – don’t tell anyone,” the cardinal said in a whisper, before he resumed speaking in a normal volume. “He said, ‘This is the Good News, and you will be my witnesses.’”
This message of witnessing to the truths of the faith resonated with sophomore Sean Skahen, who co-chairs the Catholic Student Center’s community service program. “I like how he emphasized the importance of being a witness… the courageousness of being an evangelist,” he said. After all, said Skahen, “a witness isn’t someone who hears stories about someone secondhand; they’re really there and actually being present in Christ, in his sayings, his teachings and what he did.”
The cardinal also instructed them to be joyful in their faith, listing the many reasons why Christians have cause for elation. “We have the risen Lord offering us everlasting life,” said Cardinal Wuerl. “We have the risen Lord saying, ‘It doesn't matter how many times you fall, I will help you up.’”
Skahen was touched the cardinal “not only had Mass with us, but took the time to have conversations with us and teach us,” he said. “Like he said, his job is to teach us about the faith [and] he does that in some really macro ways, but to reach out to a really small part of the community shows how much of a goal it is for him.”
The Catholic Student Center at the University of Maryland is a place on campus where “Catholic Terps” can receive the sacraments, attend movie nights, participate in service opportunities or just do their homework in the library. “Something that I discovered this year is that the CSC is a place not just of people who are all Catholic, but who are sharing the same journey together,” said Edwards. “Everyone is seeking Christ together and working to keep Christ at the center of their lives, and to have that support built in, it’s really beautiful. From that stems friendship, and Christ-centered friendships, which are, in my experience, fruitful in many, many ways.”
